4 thoughts on “cnn.com going tabloid”

Well, the headlines are outrageous, and most of the stories are true tabloid fodder. Still, I’d argue that the black algae near South Florida is kind of an important story since there are some forms of algae, mostly spawned by waste and climate changes, that threaten Florida’s coral reef and delicate ecosystem.

You missed this other CNN story, Josh:
Scientists use radiation to cure flatulence
LONDON, England (Reuters) –Indian scientists have come up with a cure for flatulence, by blasting guilty foodstuffs such as beans with gamma rays to knock out the offending chemicals that cause the problem, New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.
Bacteria in the large intestine are responsible for the gases that cause flatulence, and when these bugs eat certain types of carbohydrate called oligosaccharides they produce a mixture of methane and smelly sulphurous gases, which cause the social embarrassment.
The finger of blame is most commonly pointed at beans and vegetables, 60 percent of whose carbohydrates are made up of oligosaccharides.
So Jammala Machaiah and Mrinal Pednekar in the food-science laboratory at India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Trombay decided to see whether small doses of radiation affected these carbohydrates in various beans common in Indian cuisine.
Using standard food treatment technology, they irradiated samples of mung beans, chickpeas, black-eyed beans and red kidney beans with a low-intensity gamma-ray, before giving the beans their standard two-day soak prior to cooking.
The scientists, whose research will appear in the journal Food Chemistry, found the irradiation dramatically accelerated a reduction in oligosaccharides that occurs naturally in the soaking process, the magazine said.
After two days of soaking, the levels of oligosaccharides in mung beans had fallen by 70 percent, compared to a 35 percent reduction in un-irradiated, but soaked, beans.
Black-eyed beans and chickpeas also showed a marked fall but kidney beans were found to hold stubbornly onto their oligosaccharides.
“In India, beans are a very popular and important part of the national diet, but some people can’t eat a lot of beans because of the flatulence problem,” Machaiah said.
“This is unfortunate as it is a very good source of essential nutrients. Irradiation would make beans less of a problem.”